The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent the work is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Compressors are used in a wide variety of industrial and residential applications including, but not limited to, heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. Electric motors are used to power and/or actuate elements of the compressors. A control system for controlling operation of an electric motor of a compressor can include a drive. The drive can include: a power factor correction (PFC) circuit; filters, such as an electromagnetic interference (EMI) filter and a direct current filter; an inverter power circuit; a processor; and other circuit components.
The power factor correction (PFC) circuit provides a power factor correction between an inputted alternating current (AC) and a generated direct current (DC). A power factor is an indicator of a relationship between current and voltage in a circuit, or how effectively a circuit uses real power as compared to reactive power, which is stored and returned to a power source. A power factor can be expressed as a value between zero and one. A power factor can be equal to a ratio of actual electrical power dissipated by a circuit relative to a product of root mean squared (RMS) values of current and voltage for the circuit. The power factor approaches 1 as this ratio increases. The PFC circuit can be implemented to increase a power factor of a drive, thereby increasing an amount of real power used by the circuit as compared with an amount of reactive power the circuit stores and returns to the power source.
The inverter power circuit may convert DC power to AC power (e.g., 3-phase AC power) to drive a motor of the compressor. The processor controls operation of the drive including operation of the PFC circuit and the inverter power circuit.